Caravan carnage: Time For Tea?

If got stuck behind a caravan this bank holiday here's fuel for your darkest fantasy...

Caravanning and great driving. As concepts go, you'd do well to find them in the same book, let alone the same sentence. And yet, in today's Time For Tea?, both are on display, iin equal measure.

First, a warning: you may sneer at the very idea of caravan racing, but once you startwatching this video, you may find it difficult to tear yourself away.

The year was 1980, the venue Ipswich. As in all caravan races, there was a grotesque first lap pile-up as the drivers 'accidentally' crashed off as much speed reducing weight as possible. Pole man Graham 'Basho' Poulter wasn't involved: his Mk2 Jag and stately Buckingham Marquis Deluxe sixberther had made the most of the rolling start and was already establishing a handy lead. But surely nobody could get through the totally blocked turn one?

Basho could.

Gasp in awe as he finds racing lines where others could only find an early bath. Smile in admiration as he uses the weight of his Buckingham to swat away the unwelcome attentions of lesser rigs and delicately modulate the handling balance of his Jag. Smirk as the main straight crowd sways back to avoid being smacked in the face by flapping bits of Formica. No crowd protection worth the name back in those days.

Showing perfect timing, the Jag expired like an abused donkey as it crossed the line. As the commentator says, it was a literally smashing race, but in an ugly sea of splintered plywood, burst radiators and sticky carpet, there was something strangely beautiful in the Poulter drive. Silky driving skills allied to an utter lack of mechanical or any other sympathy is a rare combination these days, one that you would think might be of interest to Toto Wolff or the recruitment manager of London Transport at least.

Surely Basho deserves another moment in the sun - but where is he now? Many believe he changed his first name to Ian and became a golfer, thereby abandoning what could have been a glorious career on the dirt ovals of East Anglia, if only caravan racing hadn't fallen off the motorsport map when crowds (and promoters) got fed up with the inordinately long gaps between races.

Our own research has turned up a still shot of Basho blithely thrashing an Aunty Rover into an unlikely state of dismemberment reminiscent of the closing sequence of The Terminator, but other than that we know nothing of this unlikely hero. If you can fill in any gaps, please contribute to the thread. We might even launch a PH petition to bring back caravan racing - man, machine, and bathroom tap in perfect harmony.

See here